THEATRE: CURTAIN CALLS

I'm sorry, but it's all too ghastly. Everywhere you look, two- bit producers are trying to recapture lost youth by skimming through their mouldering piles of singles and stringing their favourites together into compilation shows. The results tend to be along the lines of Groovy Nites or Now That's What I Call Profit. They're not clever, they're not funny and the best that can be said for them is that they're cheap and cheerful.

So congratulations to Newbury's Watermill Theatre for bucking this odious trend. Instead, the team behind the recent successful revival of Cabaret has now unearthed Irma la Douce. When this Sixties French musical comedy was first produced in English it was directed by Peter Brook, but lest you think that this means it might be a shade austere, let me quote the original poster campaign: "It's fun on the loose with Irma la Douce".

Watermill, Newbury (01635 46044) to 25 Sept